It's time for #OldEnglish #WordOfTheDay and also the #AngloSaxon unattested #Saint of the month.

gomel-ferhþ [ ᚷᚩᛗᛖᛚᚠᛖᚱᚻᚦ ]: old sprit / old soul / wise heart or mind

gomel: Advanced in age, aged, old, ancient

ferhþ: 1. life 2. heart ; spirit ; mind

This is sometimes associated with people of great and deep magic. People of great wisdom and compassion.

An unattested #AngloSaxon saint from northern #Kent, Ædgingra (Blessed Vassal / Disciple), was said to be a gomel-ferhþ. He was known as a local healer and one who was very skilful in the arts of healing magics.

One story goes he was visiting the Kentish village of Hartlip, where when to pray under a tree and passed away peacefully.

After several days the villagers approached him and realised he had died. However, this body had not attached any flies and did not smell. In stead of disturbing him, they brought earth to where the rain kneeled and buried him. This became the spot there St Michael and All Angels Church was built.

They say, that during the rebuilding process in the early 1500s, as they dug down into the foundations, the body of the local saint was found, still in perfect condition.

Pronunciation: https://files-thefolklore-cafe.ams3.digitaloceanspaces.com/attachments%2Fgomel-ferh%C3%BE.m4a

(Artwork by me)

#histodons #linguistcs #medieval #medievodons #storytelling #storytellingart #folklore

@histodons
@languagelovers
@oldenglish
@folklore

Yesterday I learned that if you say #GPT with #French pronunciation, to a francophone it sounds like j'ai pété (I farted).

Pretty childish, but wildly amusing in an otherwise dry lecture on the implications of #AI !

Didn't happen to me, but it's a true story from someone who was there.

#linguistcs #language #chatgpt #humor

@ancientsounds

In Persian there is a false(?) cognate with English "am."

For example, "I am hungry" in Persian is [mæn go.ros.ˈnɛ ˈʔæs.tæm]
PN.1S hungry be.PRS-1S

Colloquially, [ʔæs.tæm] is contracted to [ʔæm]. And since it's a pro-drop language, it becomes [go.ros.ˈnɛ ʔæm]

#linguistcs #etymology @linguistics

#Kant's German is very archaic and somewhat strange, even for the time. One reason could be that he was perhaps not a native speaker of High German. Kant came from a craftsmen family. Königsberg was located in the area of Lower Prussian, a Low German dialect. In his childhood he possibly did not speak colloquial High German. He would have met High German in church (the G. of the Luther Bible and the Catechism) and in school (the G. of old books). #linguistcs #philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Prussian_dialect

Alright intro time! As my bio says I'm a trans linguistic anthropologist. I study #extremology #linguistcs #Languages #Americanlanguages and #queerstudies . I'll be using this to post linguistics stuff <maybe some other things but idk yet>!

#linguistcs question re #Gender

Some #indigenous languages do gender differently than Euro languages. Genders are living/non-living, animate/inanimate, not male/female. Implies spirit or soul to animate. G-searching says Indo-European languages didn't have sex genders, got them later, also started with living/non-living genders. Is this true?

Think this has big implications- if we see the world as basically dead/non-living, destructive resource extraction, climate change are seen differently.